


A hold on me

by guar



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Coming of Age, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Gen, Minor Violence, Misogyny, Non-Graphic Violence, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Transmisogyny, trans!damian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 03:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12548348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guar/pseuds/guar
Summary: Damian starts thinking about self-identity.  Things both are and aren’t difficult.  Growing up is hard, you know.





	A hold on me

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in 2014, because I was dealing with and processing some things. I also had wanted to write a character study on Damian (and then tinker with Batfamily dynamics as I see them) but this got away from me as it got personal. Because this was me processing, it gets a little angry at the midpoint…but I think the beginning and the ending are hopeful -- and are my favorite parts. If I ever explicitly revisit this topic it’d be a happier ride. As is, there’s mentions and descriptions in semi-explicit detail of transmisogyny and some transmisogynistic violence. I just edited my old writing and I’ve been away from comics for three years, so. I am very rusty.
> 
> Warnings include: narrative self misgendering (but really, documents the process of Damian questioning and changing gender identity) ; intentional misgendering by others (classmates and media) ; two instances of not hugely graphic but still described encounters of assault, one briefly sexual ; an encounter with implications of an intent to assault ; a… lot of transmisogyny, both casual and intentional ; general semi-sad trans angst (that ends optimistically, I promise).
> 
> If you want me to outline specifics of any or all the instances of those warnings, leave a comment asking and I will gladly let you know what they are and where they start and stop so you can skip it if you want. Let me know if you catch any snafus with pronouns (it’s always possible! and I deeply apologize if it happens) or format issues or typos etc etc – and I hope you enjoy this old old fic of mine.

Drake is the one who catches him staring at Brown’s old Robin suit, something that he has been doing a lot lately when no one else is around. Damian tries to not show his shock – Drake doesn’t often get the jump on him…though that may be for lack of effort on Drake’s part. On this side of ten, as his fourteenth birthday looms ahead of him, Damian is starting to realize that maybe Drake chooses to play along with their antagonistic relationship only when he has the energy to spare. Damian is not entirely sure what to make of this recent revelation.

“What,” Drake offers flatly, one eyebrow raised. “You trying to come up with new sartorial insults for Steph?”

Damian makes sure to so visibly roll his eyes that Drake can see it clearly even while halfway across the Cave. Drake, in response, only huffs out a little, half amused, “Okay Damian,” and goes about whatever it is he’s come down here to do.

They peacefully coexist for the next few minutes, Damian still hanging by the display cases and Drake typing something at the main computer, and for some reason that makes Damian think it is okay to – to ask. If it had been anyone else, they would have tried to engage him in a conversation, about why he had been looking so intently at Brown’s old uniform. Drake didn’t, and for that, Damian tells himself, for that Drake deserves a reward. An explanation.

“I am considering adding a sort of… extra armor piece to the Robin suit,” Damian says casually. He has been analyzing what it is about Brown’s suit that draws him in, and how to recreate that. “Why was Brown’s tunic allowed this length?”

Drake turns from the computer, from running whatever it is he runs through the computer diagnostics all the time, and looks at Damian. It is a more… appraising a look this time. More deliberate and deliberately searching for something. “Uh, ‘cause Steph wanted it to be cute, maybe? And because Bruce has a really hard time with compartmentalizing when it comes to Robin, probably. The skirt helped with… distinction. With reminding him that Steph wasn’t anybody but herself.”

Damian rolls his eyes again. “Had a hard time,” he corrects patiently.

Drake looks incredibly amused, smirking at Damian like he understands something Damian does not. “‘Had’. Okay. Okay _sure_.”

Damian waves a hand to dismiss the matter. “Right, well, like I said, for me the extra length could add protection, and adding material to the utility belt might enable extra storage space for my tools as well – ”

“Well, but Damian,” Drake cuts in. “You add any more weight to the suit you’ve got and it’s just going to slow you down. Not to mention you’ll instantly sink if you ever hit any water. Anyway, making a _battle skirt_ isn’t going to save you much more than what the suit already has.”

And that _word_ has Damian’s face ablaze – and he doesn’t know – doesn’t know why –

Drake pauses, and he tilts his head at Damian’s strange reaction. “Wait a second…” Drake says, slowly, like he’s figured something out. “You just… Do you just want a skirt added to the Robin suit?”

Damian’s face is on absolute fire. “No! Shut up, what do you even _know_?” He hisses out desperately fast, before turning and storming out of the cave.

+++

Drake lets it all lay where it’s been strewn for a few days. One morning though, Damian wakes up to Drake knocking and opening his door at a ridiculously early hour.

“What?” Damian snarls, defensively lashing out to retroactively make up for the one lulled moment of false security he entertained several days back.

Drake sighs and throws some kind of folder at the foot of the bed. “I talked to Tam about drawing up some designs – and I helped a little, too. We had to redistribute some of the weight – your shoes are ridiculous, did you know that? – but any of those completed designs should work well off paper and outside of theory.”

Damian squints at him judgmentally, trying to work out what Drake’s playing at here. Drake shakes his head in disbelief at Damian’s wary gaze. “Look, _you_ take it up with Bruce and Dick if you really want the damn thing. Getting used to a new suit is going to take a couple of weeks of trial-and-error, but it’s actually not the biggest change in the world and it’s not that big of a deal.”

And maybe this is Drake’s game plan: he gets on Damian’s good side while Damian is functioning at a slightly less efficient level than usual while waking up, and get Damian to talk about things he usually keeps nearer and dearer to his heart. If that is indeed the plan, Damian is only slightly pained to admit that it’s working, just a little.

“It… is not the suit, that may be the big deal,” Damian admits, not planning on saying much more. He is not sure of much more.

Drake looks at him in that quiet observing way of his. “I can’t… help you without the details,” Drake says carefully. “Though I have some… idea, I think. Of what you’re – ” Damian may only be half awake, but he still manages to shoot a dangerous glare Drake’s way.

Drake lifts his hands in a disarming way. “Right, I won’t put words in your mouth. But seriously, Damian, just… take it at your own pace.”

Drake doesn’t even try to explain himself, what he’s trying to get at, and just leaves Damian with little questions, little whispers, nudging at his brain.

+++

Before Damian accidentally stumbles into a conversation he is in no way ready to follow up on again, he researches a little. He looks up some things, embarrassing google searches based on little echoes of feelings and thoughts he has been having over the past year or so, and has learned new words to prescribe and assign to these things. Damian also looks through the packet of designs, and loves a lot of them – though he definitely has favorites.

After a month of silence on his part, Damian then takes action… by throwing the packet at the back of Grayson’s head one night after patrol. Father is out of the country, handling something with Batman Inc in Germany of all places, and everyone else is scattered, running their own circuits and investigations. It seems as good as ever a time to broach the topic.

“D, what is this?” Grayson asks around a spectacularly large yawn, as he begins to flip through the packet. He blinks blearily at the blueprints and scrawled notes, but doesn’t seem to actually take in what he is looking at.

“Ideas for new costume upgrades,” Damian says bluntly. “I mentioned it to Drake, and he and his assistant came up with that.”

Grayson blinks slowly. “Assistan – you mean Tamara Fox? Damian, she’s not really Tim’s assistant.” He squints at the designs closer. “Yeah no, this _is_ totally Tam’s handiwork – she’s brilliant. And Tim’s notes are…” Grayson hums appreciatively. “They make quite a team, those two.”

Grayson turns a page and ends up on Damian’s favorite design, the one that has a large star drawn in the corner in red ink, and then circled furiously. This design’s skirt is perfect: doesn’t flare out too much, stops at mid-thigh and promises to move like the cape, doesn’t necessitate getting rid of his boots like some of the other designs, and the pleats are slotted for storing specialty-made throwing knives. Damian has noted these things, also in red ink. 

Grayson lingers on this design, eyes slowly becoming more alert as he reads over the page. Damian is both excited and nervous. It is now or never, something in his heart whispers. 

Grayson looks up at him, languid and curious. “What’s wrong with your current suit, though?”

Damian grits his teeth and makes himself say it. “I wanted a skirt.”

Grayson blinks again, only more curious. “That’s… it?”

Damian’s ears are getting hot. “Yes. I – you have to help me tell Father.”

Grayson shrugs and goes back to the designs, flipping carefully through a few more pages. “That’s not going to be hard – I mean, you’ve all already done the legwork here, and Bruce listens to reason – ”

Damian feels like his insides might shake themselves apart. “No, you have to help me tell Father that I. I am. I am not.” Damian’s words fail him, and he stutters to a stop.

Grayson looks up, no longer carefree and curious; he is wary, feeling how the atmosphere shifts, and realizing there is something afoot. “Damian? What? What is it?”

There are tears prickling the edges of Damian’s eyes and – and no, that is not allowed. Out of sheer will, Damian prevents them from falling and instead focuses on his words. He has to say them. He – he has to –

“I am not… I do not think that I am. A – a boy.”

Understanding slowly starts to dawn in Grayson’s eyes, and Damian can only look away. Looks up at the ceiling of the cave. “Have you ever heard of transgender people?” Damian asks, voice a whisper.

“Oh _Damian_ ,” Grayson whispers back, and he pulls Damian into a tight hug. Damian usually would not go along with the embrace so easily, but it’s reassuring to tuck his face in the crook of Grayson’s neck. “Of course I have. Damian, it’s _okay_.”

And Damian just breathes in Grayson’s scent, trying to still his racing heartbeat.

+++

Things get considerably easier after that. The two of them talk, for a long time in the cave that night, about how Damian has been feeling since turning twelve – little twinges of ‘maybe I shouldn’t like this that much?’ when crossdressing to go undercover, the barest hint of jealousy when they dress up for functions and Cain and Brown get dresses, and how being on the cusp of the onset of puberty is somehow one of the scariest unknowns Damian has ever faced.

How it is just all these little things stacking up inside him; that for the past few months skirts have been entrancing Damian in this amazing but frightening new way, and the thought of being looming and intimidating as Batman is still a goal, but one that does not overlap so neatly with the vague picture of how Damian envisions his future self in everyday life.

“I don’t know why this started, when exactly it started,” Damian finds himself finishing up with, feeling raw all over. “I don’t know.”

“That’s okay,” Grayson says as easily as ever. “That’s not a big deal. That’s not what’s important here. We’re going to figure this out, okay? You tell us what you need, and we will figure it out. I’ll handle your dad – not that he’s going to. You know. Freak out. No one is.”

And objectively Damian knows that. It still doesn’t make this any less hard, any less weird for him. For… her?

Damian is not sure about that kind of change yet. He just. He wants his skirt, and for now that’s all he is sure about.

+++

Soon after that talk, a couple of interesting things happen. Damian gets the skirted suit, Grayson talks to Father, and then Alfred and Gordon work together to organize a transgender seminar for the whole family. Todd even shows up, and Damian doesn’t even want to know what bribes and favors they had to pull to get him to agree to sit for the allotted three hours this is supposed to take.

“Why do _I_ have to be here?” Damian grumbles to Grayson pointedly, on the specified Friday night of the seminar, as Alfred finishes setting up the overhead projector. Damian, pronouns undecided, is currently bundled up in a sweatshirt and jeans and currently pretending to not still be pondering carefully over Brown’s offer to take them shopping for new additions to their wardrobe, examining the pros and cons of such an outing.

“There’s plenty for you to learn too, I promise,” Gordon says patiently. “It might even help you with your own labels and the whole self-identification process. Which can’t hurt, you know?”

Damian kind of wants to roll their eyes, but then again: no pronouns over here, which is sort of for the birds. ‘They’ is alright as a pronoun, Damian isn’t dismissing that. But Damian also has not definitively chosen ‘they’ because they want it – it is instead out of the necessity of having no other pronouns that don’t actively raise the hair on the back of Damian’s neck with the prickle of discomfort.

So… Gordon has a point. “Whatever,” Damian says, only a little sullenly. They are also trying not to be hugely embarrassed that everyone is so. So casual about the whole thing. Damian is not sure why everyone coping and handling this with such finesse is leaving them embarrassed about making the family have to deal with their – their _gender issues_ , or whatever, that have appeared to have popped up out of nowhere. But if Damian sits and thinks about it for too long… it somehow gets even more embarrassing.

“Be nice,” Father says lightly, and Damian flings their hands up over their head in mock-exasperation. 

Grayson snickers and ruffles Damian’s hair through the hood, and when Damian hisses at him, Drake and Brown both laugh quietly. Even Cain smiles as well. Damian - _tt_ -s at the lot of them, though to be honest it is mostly for show.

“You’ll like it,” Gordon continues to soothe, completely unbothered. “Cass, can you hit the lights?”

Damian thinks they see Alfred and Gordon share a furtive glance, a secret little smile, as they both clear their throats and begin. And Damian isn’t all too sure what to make of _that_.

(The seminar is actually _very_ informative, and if Damian was not sure before, about the validity of being their being trans, well now… Just, Damian is a little taken aback because how has this been something they have never _realized_ before now?

Damian even attempts, perhaps poorly, to thank Drake afterwards; for his role in setting this whole thing off. As the seminar draws to a close and everyone is set free to get up to their own devices, Damian figures it is something Drake should be thanked for – an important extension of gratitude beyond what Damian has for the new suit itself.

But after cornering him and staring into his face wordlessly for a good minute, Damian comes up with no good way to vocalize these emotions. Eventually, Drake just quirks a little smile and pats Damian on the head once before walking away.)

+++

So they all adjust. Damian chooses to have shes and hers attached to her but keeps the name Damian as a memento from her mother, and she goes with Brown to get new clothes – and Cain has to come too. Because Brown may be growing on Damian, but anything over a half an hour alone together with Brown is a surefire way to have an unproductive outing filled to the brim with their verbal sparring and little else.

Sure enough, around the hour mark of the shopping trip they snipe at each other enough that Cain forbids them from speaking directly to each until they can be civil. It takes a good ten minutes of only being allowed to speak through Cain before they get it together and go back to clothes shopping.

They buy a lot of casual clothes, and Brown even convinces her to pick up a few training bras – though Damian buries them at the bottom of her underwear drawer, underneath all her boxer briefs. She goes again later with Grayson, because skirts and dresses are amazing and Damian wants more, wants nearly her entire wardrobe to be only skirts and dresses.

(…And then she goes later _again_ with Alfred, who is not wholly pleased with the bias in the clothes they have procured – too many ‘play dresses’ as he says, sounding truly old and truly stereotypically British, for once.

“You _are_ still going to have to make appearances at formal events, you know,” Alfred says tiredly as he takes her to a high-end boutique for things more fit for gala appearances and accompanying Father on business trips.)

Cain later gets Damian breast forms (“Steph helped me order them,” Cain says, unusually wordy as she hands over the box. “I’ll teach you how to adjust your fighting form while wearing them, if you want.”) as a late birthday present, and Damian proceeds to hide them in the back of her closet because she is not thinking about puberty until she is good and ready, and no one – not even Cain – can make her do otherwise.

Father sets rules, and isn’t at all disappointed in the loss of a son – as Damian feared, in the worst of worst scenarios, that he maybe could be. 

“No hormones on your own, _ever_ ,” Father says sternly. “And if you have any problems or questions, need something, anything, you tell me or you tell Alfred or Dick or any of the others, and we’ll handle it together. Do I make myself clear?”

_Puberty puberty_ , everything seems to sing softly at Damian, and she misses being tiny and ten and so sure of everything. “Understood.”

+++

The suit is brilliant. Weeks and weeks later, she is still basking in that revelation. Damian is not sure who this Tamara Fox person is precisely, or what parts of the new suit are her genius and which parts are Drake’s… handiwork, but the suit as light as ever and perfect. The skirt occasionally ruffles against her legs, flaps with the wind when she jumps over rooftops and gives easily as she spins into a roundhouse kick or shifts between fighting style stances. She had been afraid the impracticalities of a skirt would hinder her fighting skills, but Damian had been wrong: with the right materials and design it is every bit as perfect as she hoped it would be.

It confuses everyone for a while – there had been plenty of gossip magazines that read “Another New Robin?” and Damian has had baddies who’ve gloated about her supposed death and replacement right as she descends upon them. And then some get with the program and some don’t and then the two camps, in both the media and in the underground, stay firmly split between those who think she’s a new Robin and those who think she is just growing up and showing her true colors, her ‘true gender’ (according to them).

“Maybe I should start using the breast forms?” Damian ponders, mostly to herself. Cain and Drake are making tea and Damian is at the kitchen table staring at a worksheet from her tutor, so she doesn’t pretend they can’t hear her and instead openly looks at the both of them for advice.

Cain traces a careful finger along the rim of her mug while studying Damian carefully. “Only if you want to.”

Damian cards a frustrated hand through her hair. She has been keeping it short and in her usual style, the one she has had since she was ten, but if she is going to ‘grow up’ and be a girl, should she grow it out too? Everything is so unnecessarily complicated nowadays. “Well? Do I want to?” _Read me_ , Damian is saying to her. _Tell me what my subconscious body language says_.

Cain only shakes her head. It is Damian’s decision, she clearly means, and Cain is apparently not planning to intervene in it.

Drake takes his dear time sorting through the tea drawer while finding whatever flavor teabags it is he’s searching for, and only looks up to answer when he is through. “Why don’t you try them out and spar with us for a bit? If you’re not sure, then try it out.”

The way he says it, like it’s so obvious, makes Damian wrinkle her nose in annoyance. “Fine,” she says defiantly, rising to a challenge that is not really there. “I’m going to go change. Meet you at the mats in ten minutes.”

Cain layers a hand over Damian’s as she tries to stand up and storm out. “Calm down. Tea time.” Cain picks up her waiting cup and gestures tellingly with it. She is not going anywhere until she has finished it.

Drake, while sipping at his own tea, has pulled out an extra mug and is fixing to steep the water with two bags of loose leaf tea. They’re the extra bags he took his time finding, which… alright then. “You like it strong, right? And while we wait…”

He flips open his laptop and starts keying ‘how to wear breast forms’ into a google search. “I don’t know if you know how to put them on and wear them, since all your undercover work has been as pre-adolescent kids, but you might as well start learning now. And I know a thing or two about it too, from personal experience – you’ll get it in no time.”

Damian scoffs. “Obviously,” she says, confidence completely overtaking her previous apprehension and uncertainty. And although slight annoyance with the whole ordeal even needing to _be_ an internal ordeal in the first place still lingers, she is grateful for the help and input her family readily offers.

+++

The first time Damian wears breast forms out onto the field – much much later, because she has made sure to practice with them enough in training that they aren’t going to slip out of place or mess up her form or anything dumb like that – is also almost her last. And it is not her, so much as it is absolute stupid – stupid _fuckery_. There is no other word to describe it.

Damian actually bars it from her memory a little (tries to, but –), because it’s dumb. It’s _dumb_.

She gets the drop on some two-bit baddie wearing a gas mask, when his partner – who she thought had cleared out and gotten away already – apparently comes back in time to gas the alley with the same experimental knock out drug they’ve been using all over Crime Alley to commit petty robbery.

And it’s experimental alright; Damian is in and out of consciousness, but she hears one of them say some remark, something like, “Well _well_ , the lady Robin sure is filling out nicely,” close enough to her face that her comm picks it up for the rest of the family to hear too. They, of course, start having a tightly controlled panic party over the link, demanding her location and coordinates.

Damian panics a little herself, can only manage a surprised gasp as it is happening, and it’s dumb. The only really solid thing she remembers is Todd swooping in while roaring, “Hey, you _don’t fuck with kids, you sick fucker_ ,” loud and clear over the comm link as it reverberates throughout the alley. And then Damian is scrambling away with a woozy head, the heat of the guy’s hand still lingering on her chest through the Kevlar. The phantom sensation of his thigh pressed forcefully between her legs and resting heavily against her cup imprinted in her brain.

She doesn’t remember much about the rest of that night, probably because of the chemicals swirling through her system, but she remembers the next day, and how Gordon and Brown visit her in the morning, sit by her bedside and have a long discussion about sexual violence and rape. It’s not that Damian is unaware of it, doesn’t know the nature of it after working in this business for so long… it is just that she has never been so blatantly a target, a victim, of it before.

_Get used to having to guard against it, having to deflect it, learn to be careful_ , their weary tones and grim faces tell her, when Gordon explains the driving force of misogyny behind it, when Brown brings up the cases she has seen firsthand of trans women who were made victims and then murdered for so-called ‘tricking’ their victimizers.

“This isn’t how this should be,” Damian hisses out, angry rather than scared because it is the only way she knows how to react.

Gordon huffs out a little humorless laugh, “That’s true.”

And Brown only smiles faintly and stares off into the far distance outside of Damian’s window.

+++

The second most memorable time of being subjected to such _absolute fuckery_ thus far is perhaps one of most tame encounters Damian has had in her short time of being out as trans. And yet…

It is after she finally gives in to Grayson and Father’s prodding for her to attend more public forums of education when she is fourteen. She goes to one of Gotham’s finest private academies for all the children of Gotham’s elite and wealthy, if only because it will look better than homeschooling on her college applications (because apparently, according to Father, Grayson, and even Brown and Drake – Drake! who only has a GED because finishing high school did not agree with the timing of such events like No-Man’s-Land and nearly everyone in Drake’s family and close friends’ circle dying – college is necessary for her to attend).

Yes, and this private academy is such a _fine_ school, such a prime example of education _perfected_ , she thinks nastily as four boys from her gym class try to round on her during the free period.

How it gets to that point is: Damian has found she likes her advanced chemistry class. Something about learning all the intimate details about why chemicals work the way they do – why, to a certain extent, the human body works the way it does with its environment – is interesting. She is incredibly excited for human physiology next semester, wants to opt into the animal science elective next year meant for students possibly interested in veterinary sciences for their university majors.

So what this means is Damian has taken to going to the science wing during her free period, to ask questions and talk to the science teachers, to get a feel for the subjects to come and to familiarize herself with the department she thinks she might be spending a lot of time with.

And this particular day, these buffoons intercept her in one of the empty corridors. Of course, Damian had heard them a full two minutes earlier, hiding and shuffling around in the unoccupied lab room they exit from. She had just thought they had been idiots rifling through the prep closet for resources for dumb entertainment – things like stinkbombs, overpowered rocket launchers… things that, most likely, would end up with them accidentally blowing themselves up. Turns out she is wrong about their intent.

“Hey, bitch,” one of them croons, trying his best to look intimidating. “Bet that gets you off at night, yeah? Getting called a bitch, you freak.”

Damian goes into stillness, the type of still that Cain always compares to a predator tracking its prey, deciding its next move. Everyone in the family does it, because it is a good tactic, the calm before the kill. She just watches them and barely breathes, waiting to see what they’ll do. They won’t be in the wrong, if she does anything to them, because policies and rules are always skewed for the worst kind of people. _Always_.

Maybe a different crowd would see the signs of her eerie silence and stillness and back off. Any other crowd that hadn’t been babied and sheltered since birth by their parents’ name and money. These boys, however, do not feel any fear, because they think themselves untouchable.

“What, being a boy for a week at our school too much that you turned girl on us?” One boy says, clearly thinking he’s being clever – like this school had been the deciding factor of Damian’s gender. Like Damian (and the entirety of her family) are not still so incredibly angry at the previous headmaster for barring her attendance unless she wore the boys’ uniform and was enrolled on the boys’ side in gym class. That headmaster is now a former one, because Damian and literally every single one of her family members absolutely ripped into him, absolutely gave him hell and had him removed from his position with as much disgrace as possible and ensured he would never work in this city again.

The gym situation he’d caused still had lasted a week, and while her family had told her she didn’t have to go until it was all resolved, Damian has never believed in backing down from a fight. She had not been about to show any weakness to an idiot headmaster with an _extremely_ limited number of days left in his power. 

So Damian came to school, with her head held high and her eyes sharp, lying in wait for the kill. And now she is allowed to do what she wants, under the new headmistress, and so Damian wears the girls’ school uniform and gets to use the girls’ locker room for gym (though there are still the occasional complaints from some of the girls, or from some of their parents – these things are not worth her energy and attention, though, and should pass, eventually).

All that has nothing to do with anything but the old headmaster that she’s already gotten fired. However, this boy of course doesn’t care, and Damian’s not wasting words on him.

“You’re such a piece of shit,” another boy says, and that’s rich, that’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it? Damian is a brat and a probable ‘piece of shit’ for a lot of reasons, most if not all having a lot to do with being a trained child-assassin with a pedigree comparable to that of nobility, so that is just. Really incredibly rich. “And hey, you’re Muslim or whatever, too, aren’t you? Why don’t you wear those dumb headscarves all your women wear, if you’re such a girl?”

Damian fights the urge to roll her eyes at the absolute sloppiness, the absolute meandering attempts to make her feel threatened and afraid. She is trained in intimidation tactics and she knows what they don’t: that you have to be concise and make a concentrated strike at the same place over and over to make someone really break in all the most efficient ways. But even so… well, Damian has a little blossom of rage unfurling itself in her chest.

The leader of their pack – Damian maybe recognizes him, thinks he might be some rising lacrosse star, because _that_ is the sport around here that makes you big, lacrosse – silences the others’ tittering with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, bitch, you wanna be a girl so bad? Still got your dick?”

And now Damian is glowering at the boys in front of her. She knows where this is going and she is – she is calculating. Because if they hit her first, she can hit them back and be somewhat in the right (according to their school’s code of conduct), won’t make the evening news as a diva trust fund baby with no control and a dim future – all with a whole hell of a lot of misgendering going on. But then again, if they so much as approach her with a different intent, if they try for holding her down and groping her or _whatever_ , Damian is going to go berserk on them and the school might have to suspend or even expel her. Because she will not let a secret identity dictate the fights she picks, when she is the one being wronged.

“I bet you do,” the boy sneers. “Let’s see it then, if you don’t.”

And Damian sneers back. “I didn’t know that was a thing you were into. You might need to tell all the cheerleaders and groupies about that. Nip those unwanted advances in the bud.”

And it is actually a little hilarious, how easy it is to make him feel threatened. Damian knows there are plenty of cheerleaders and fans who are guys (which makes that barb a bit too generalized to even really be accurate), and that there are plenty of other students who are probably just as _not_ cisgender as Damian – even if they have not worked it out as concretely, have not shared that secret beyond themselves. Damian doesn’t have a stance on her own sexuality yet, but some of those cheerleaders and fans maybe do, and some of them aren’t straight either, which may or may not make this boy someone they’re even compatible to be attracted to. That’s another thing to keep in mind.

But none of those things are thoughts that occur to little mister lacrosse, and what’s important here is that Damian can easily say one snide remark about how he is _maybe_ not heterosexual and his entire ego comes slamming down viciously with all the fragility of Alfred’s fine china. _God_ , it’s _hilarious_.

The boy throws his chest out with all the bravado of a damned monkey, nostrils flared and mouth pinched. “Shut the hell up, bitch. No one actually wants to see your weird dick-cunt.”

“Yeah,” one of his friends chimes in angrily. “What, you want him to see it? You have a crush on my boy?”

Damian has already broken the too-still façade, so there is no point in trying to rebuild it. She might as well keep it going and throw barbs of her own. “Your _boy_ , and the rest of you, need to get the hell out of my face, before I break _yours_.” Let them think she’s crazy and ruthless and inapproachable, or whatever it is everyone thinks when she breaks out a modicum of her training while a civilian. She will literally break all their faces in, because free period is halfway over and this is all so… so _stupid_. 

And tiring. Damian… Damian is so tired all of a sudden.

“Nah,” the ringleader says, something in his tone changing, calming into a dangerous cool, and the shift has the other three boys shuffling into some sort of pre-planned position.

She gets it, Damian sees how they are trying to cover her flanks and they’re going to try and herd her into the empty lab. Like there aren’t cameras in there too, she thinks only half-laughingly. But then again, she understands how too-rich boys seem to think they are invincible. And in a lot of ways they admittedly are, because an incriminating video tape is child’s play to make disappear and never see the light of day. But see the thing is: Damian is invincible too, in her own ways, in ways that she has _earned_ , unlike them.

“You want us out of your face, you might need to convince us you’re a girl,” the ringleader says, and he smirks. “You’d like that, right? So be a good girl and show us.” 

There’s a hidden threat laced in his words, something weird and off and whatever they really want isn’t so harmless as a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question of what’s between her legs. It’s something more heinous and invasive and Damian doesn’t want to know. She hates this. She hates that this is happening when she just wanted to chat with her chemistry teacher over lunch.

But the boy laughs, like this awful situation and his creepy implicit threats are funny, and he takes a decisive step forward, hand at crotch level and surging forward. The rest of the group laughs, this low mumbling chuckle that they all seem to do in unison like some kind of demented hive mind, and Damian.

Well. Damian.

Little over a year ago, Damian had been strapped, _again_ , to an operating table and threatened real bodily harm by Doctor Pyg – which, funnily enough, had been an encounter that’s end result resolved the ‘two camps’ problem concerning any and all Robin rumors. Also, _funnily enough_ , it had led to Damian’s eventful year: as Robin she has had run-ins where her trans-ness has literally, _actually_ almost gotten her genitals mutilated – or has almost gotten her killed. Damian has woken up in the Cave from surgery with butterfly stitches all around her testicles and an aching head that had been sewn closed after being split open by a wrench wielded by the man she’d saved from loan sharks (he had heard about her, heard the rumors about her, and was not at all grateful for her saving his scum of the earth self from meeting a dark, grisly end).

Damian has both seen worse and yet seen where this kind of shit-behavior leads. She is really tired of listening to the police scanner and hearing too often about her trans sisters being hurt or murdered because little bastards like _them_ make it their business to make sure she and hers are all dehumanized to hell and back.

So when Damian slides back into her body – because she lost control, she snapped, her brain shut off and she really _really_ went berserk – there are teachers in the hallway panicking and the boys are on the floor whimpering and Damian’s knee highs and entire front lapel are wet and sticky with blood.

+++

When Father comes and gets her, she is in her gym uniform and a sweatshirt and slouching in the headmistress’s office. The two of them have already had a talk, about how the headmistress cannot protect Damian from all of what is to come because she does not do favoritism (or rather, cannot seem like she is favoring a Wayne when the Wayne family had a very clear hand in her predecessor’s resignation and presumably her coming into the position).

They’ve had a talk too about how the headmistress will take into account what was said and what the cameras picked up, but it will not excuse the severity with which Damian retaliated with. Damian had nodded sullenly at it all, and she had already heard similar things from the two teachers who had escorted her to the office, about ‘boys being boys’ and how yes, they can get aggressive sometimes but they hadn’t even touched her yet, so why did she overreact?

(One of those teachers is her history teacher, and she is switching out of that class while she is on suspended leave.)

Father and the headmistress talk for a long time while Damian waits out in the hall. She hears the whispers as people see her standing there with her hood up and her hands jammed in the front pocket, and she scowls at them all. She is still not one hundred percent sure what she did to those boys, and sure there was a lot of blood and sure an ambulance had to come, but Damian doesn’t really regret it.

“You can’t do something like this again,” Father says, just as tiredly as Damian feels while they climb into the limo. Alfred watches them both silently in the rearview mirror, and Damian avoids meeting his wise gaze. “I won’t say you were in the wrong – but those boys are civilians and you are _trained_. You cannot lose control like that.”

And Damian wants Father to back her up, to reprimand her only for not killing the bastards, but she knows that is not how this works. He’s right, at the very least she should have kept her bearings and exacted measured and tactical violence against them, shut them up and then gotten the hell out of there.

“But,” Father says, more quietly, even more vastly tired somehow. “I won’t say I don’t understand. I am sorry you had to go through that. And I don’t blame you.”

There is still a silent addendum of _but never again_ in there, but Damian’s self-righteous fury deflates and she feels… better and worse. Both. At the same time. Something in her chest aches and her body feels heavy, so she just sinks into the soft leather and whispers, “Understood, Father.”

+++

She makes the evening news, of course. Drake doesn’t know (no one but Father and Alfred know actually, though Grayson knows Damian was sent home early and hasn’t managed to procure the details yet), and has the news on in the living room adjourning the main kitchen and dining room while Alfred tries to get everyone to gather for a semblance of a family dinner.

“Alfred, I only have time for a quick bite before I need to head in for my shift,” Brown whines, even though she is grabbing onto Drake and pulling him away from the television.

“The important segments are almost done,” Drake in return whines, trying to stay put (like he even trusts American news, like American news is even relevant when Drake then goes on to check the news reported from and by ten other parts of the world). 

Alfred sighs and heads back into the kitchen, where Cain is already helping set the table. Damian rolls her eyes at the display, closes her chemistry notebook and unslouches from the sofa cushions, stretching into a stand.

Grayson is flourishing himself into the living room and announcing how Father is up in his study taking care of some calls, “But he promises he’s coming, Alfie – sooooo _baby brother_ , no excuses – ” and Damian rolls her eyes again, but harder, at Grayson going over to hang off of Drake as well. She tries her best to avoid them, as she passed them and heads towards the kitchen.

The second she steps across the threshold and into the kitchen, she hears the din in the living room behind her die down a little and then echoing from the television –

“And coming up on our entertainment news: the littlest Wayne, picking fights? A real fiery temper, indicating he’s still acting out, still dressing like a girl – but are the claims of his sexuality making him a target for bullying and sexual propositions true? Find out! Plus, we’ll have the updated conditions of the students he had an altercation with, as well as an exclusive interview with one of the victim’s attorneys about the possibility of a lawsuit against the school and the Wayne family – stay tuned!”

Damian knows everyone else hears it (this report which is wrong on several counts: like her gender, that this is her sexuality they’re talking about here, that she’s being bullied because _ha_ , impossible) – which, of course, how could they not with Drake having the damned volume up so loud. She feels all of their eyes on her back, and it makes her shoulders tense up. In front of her, Cain doesn’t look surprised as she looks directly at Damian’s face – but she probably already read Damian all afternoon and worked everything out. Alfred is calculating but calm, as he assesses the situation and tries to figure out what it is Damian wants to do about the impending freak out on her family’s part.

(Damian is not sure.)

“Damian!” Grayson exclaims, wildly shocked (this makes sense. He… knew, but only the least important parts, only the end results, and had then been so easily blown off when asking for details).

Damian sighs and finishes entering the kitchen, both feet firmly on the cool decorative tile. “Calm down, Grayson. Father is handling it. And I will not… transgress in such ways again.”

“ _Damian_.” Grayson repeats, this time stern and a little angry – though Damian knows that is not aimed at her. He is angry with the world and its injustices. And Damian will not turn around and look at the others, won’t show her face and let them try and analyze her, but she is sure they know she is trying to stay vague and aloof and distant about the issue. And they never like it when anyone in the family does that; it says a lot, all on its own. “Damian, what happened?”

Damian schools her expression into something calm and still, like the others won’t be able to see through it as the intentional blank mask that it is, and turns to face them. They won’t be able to see what it is hiding, however, and that’s what is most important here.

Drake has turned off the television, looks vaguely shocked as the remote dangles from his hand. Brown, never the best at hiding her emotions, nor ever hugely concerned with learning to get better at it, looks both livid and worried. Grayson is watching Damian carefully, and somehow gives away nothing.

Damian means to calmly offer up a not-explanation (they will hear about the whole incident in detail soon enough, from Father, from their damned twenty-four hour news cycle that gossips more than anything) and brush them off. Instead what leaves her mouth is: “They were pieces of shit and I _handled_ them.” It is angry and sharp and not at all what she means to say. Not at all how she means to say it.

Grayson’s expression softens into tangible sympathy. “Oh, _Damian_ …”

Damian looks from each of their faces, from Grayson to Brown to Drake to Cain to Alfred, and she feels that heaviness weigh down on her again, in each and every limb. “I am no longer hungry,” she says suddenly, and it comes out wrong too – like a whisper. Damian drops her gaze with all of them and sweeps out of kitchen, back through the living room and heading upstairs to her room.

+++

Damian, she has plans. She doesn’t know about hormones and operations and transitions yet, but she has plans. The other things, about herself and transitioning, she can’t… can’t think that far in the future. She is barely fourteen and anyway Father says she isn’t allowed to start any of those things until she is eighteen, if she wants them (Drake, interestingly enough, is raising a crusade against this singular rule, keeps pulling up facts and cases and citations and testimonies that speak to the contrary and seriously Damian is… fine right now, but the sentiment is still… touching).

But Damian is looking into locations for safehouses and looking into networking tactics and how to set up a phoneline that can be manned twenty-four/seven. She wants to make safe places for people like her who _aren’t like her_ – trans women who don’t have the safety of the Wayne wealth and title, safety of the Batman mantle, safety of the al Ghul training from birth. Damian wants them safe anyway, and she is working on it. Being suspended is kind of a blessing because it gives her time to work on some things she has been putting off.

When Jason Todd scales down the outside wall and taps on her window, she is in the middle of composing a proposal to Gordon (who must surely have the tech to help her with the phoneline manpower issue).

“Heard the news,” Todd says lightly when Damian lets him in. “Hard not to, I guess, since the media has been fixated on it for the past three days. You all getting sued?”

Damian scoffs. “Hardly. Those attorneys were just running around making a big stink so they could frame those boys as sympathetic when they didn’t press charges, even after the transcripts of the video were released.” Which they were, today. The day has been long and awkward, and Damian is currently hiding out from her family trying to tenderly handle her by holing herself up here in her room.

Todd grimaces. “Yeah. Man, kids these days.”

Damian barks out a laugh and remembers that she has to transfer into a different history class. “Not you, too.”

Todd snorts. “Nah, I’m joking, fuck those shits. You okay?”

Damian likes to think she is over it. That it is only everyone else who is still talking about it, stuck on it. “I am… not sure if public schooling is suited for me,” she does eventually say, thoughtfully, slowly.

Todd laughs, sounding surprised and far too amused. “Public – god, sure okay, _private public schooling_ , okay.” He sobers when Damian glares at him. “But hey, if you don’t want to go then don’t. Pick another school, god knows Bruce can afford anywhere. Are there prestigious California schools? Probably nothing as close to Ivy League college feeder schools as you get here on the ye olde East Coast, but that’s an option. You’ve got options. So if you hate this school, then don’t go.”

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Does Damian not want to go to this school? She likes the curriculum and being close to home. And she mostly is fine, though she’s pretty sure at school everyone is going to be carefully sidestepping around her for a while and the complaints about her using the girls’ locker room are going to increase because now she is ‘actively violent’. But she likes the science department, and Todd is right: if it’s not this school then eventually it might be another, because most of the family wants her to experience school in a sense that is not a private tutor. That means yes, she could switch schools. But a new school might have different problems – or even the same ones. And this school, she’s already begun to carve out a place in.

Damian eventually opts not to answer, just scratches at her legs idly because she has not shaved in three days and the stubble is growing back itchy.

Todd shrugs at her silence. “Right. Anyway, just wanted to check on you – and remind you that I have a couch-cot in a rundown apartment that could potentially have your name on it if the others get to be too much. Take me up on the offer or not – I know Bruce keeps track of my places and safehouses because I always find new bugs when I do a sweep. So you know where to go.”

Damian still doesn’t say anything, but she quirks an intrigued eyebrow. It is always good to have options, even if… well… would she ever even taken him up on it?

Jason smiles, a callous unguarded show of sharp canines, almost a smirk. Damian thinks it might be his real smile, something she doesn’t think he has ever shown her before. “Alright. See you around, kid. Hang in there.”

Damian definitely knows Todd the least well out of everyone, but she knows enough to understand his offers of worried affection. He is the type that unfalteringly takes care of his own, after all. And the offer is nice. However, Damian is a little tired of having everyone worry after her, as well-founded as it all might be sometimes, and this whole ordeal makes her promise to herself that –

That one day, she is going to figure this all out and be happy and fine and get the others to stop walking on eggshells around her so often.

+++

She wants that ‘one day’ to come sooner rather than later. So she takes matters in her own hands.

“Did you know,” Damian says candidly to a rather bold paparazzo hanging around on the absolute edge on the school grounds during lunch break. “That Robin inspired me to be out about being a trans girl?”

The paparazzo blinks blurrily at her, visibly confused. “Excuse me?”

Damian shoots him a flat look of disbelief. “Robin, of Gotham fame? Batman lore? Keep up. About a year ago there was the whole confusion over whether there were sightings of a new Robin or – ”

The paparazzo jumps on the topic, recovering from being berated by someone a third his age. “Right, yeah, everyone had been seeing a boy Robin and then all of a sudden he was running around with a new uniform with a skirt and had boobs, but same everything else. After it being a new Robin was ruled out, I’m pretty sure most of the city was convinced he was just a tomboy hitting puberty. Y’know, till it seemed like every other villain in Arkham had an account floating around about cutting open his tunic and fake boobs and a penis falling out.”

Damian’s eye twitches, because alright crude and an overstatement, but that’s fine. She is trying to make a point here, is going to direct this conversation somewhere very specific, and correcting this idiot is the first step. 

“Professor Pyg abducted and was the first to forcibly confirm Robin has at the very least a nonconforming gender identity, maybe eight months ago,” Damian says calmly, trying to unclench her teeth so she can talk clearly. “And when that happened, and all the fallout and exaggerated rumors and _everything_ afterwards happened, it made me think.”

The paparazzo is furiously scribbling, and Damian idly wonders if he also has a voice recorder or a small video camera somewhere on his person as well. He had better, if he is going to do the job properly. “It made me think about myself,” Damian clarifies lightly, head held high as she looks down the bridge of her nose at someone taller than her. It’s a skill she’s pretty proud of. “And it made me realize that if I was feeling relieved that someone as famous as _Robin_ was like me, making me feel like I could also be who I really am, what would it do for other people if _I_ was out?”

The paparazzo looks up excitedly. “So you admit to doing it for attention – ”

Damian fights the urge to flick him in between the eyes. “No, pay attention. I am being _me_. This.” She gestures at all of her. “This is me. And if I can help people by being me, I will.”

(She already does, every night on patrol. But she can do more. She has to, because who else will?)

“So maybe Robin is a trans girl like me. Maybe Robin has a different gender identity – there really are quite a few, you might want to look into that before writing this article – but what is important is that Robin is doing something important. And I want to, as well.”

+++

“ ‘ – and so I publicly announce the Gender Non-Conformity Coalition,’ ” Father reads monotonously from the paper. “ ‘It is still a work in progress, but look forward to an official press conference within the year.’ ”

Damian squirms as Father purposely stares at the paper for longer than necessary, not looking up at Damian before him. “It really is something I’ve been working on, ask Gordon – ”

“So you have a business plan?” Father asks lightly, folding the paper in half and throwing it onto his desk. He doesn’t… seem upset, Damian thinks. It’s a little hard to get a good read on him.

She clears her throat and stands at attention. “Yes. And proposals and ideas on how to keep people like me safer in Gotham, how to fund scholarships, and – ”

Father looks at Damian, and there is no anger, only intrigue and maybe a line of weariness creased in his brow. “While I don’t appreciate or encourage the tactic of going behind my back to talk to the press – ”

Damian tries to stay stalwart, though she has no clue where Father is taking this. “I just wanted you all to see that I am completely capable of – ”

Father holds up a hand to signal her to stop. She falls silent, and Father sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t like you talking to the press so young. It’s good practice but. Not on your own.”

Damian nods and bites her bottom lip. She feels lost because Father is not happy but he is also not… irritated. Not as irritated, maybe, as she expected.

“But it is a good idea. And honestly, it’s way past time Wayne Enterprises started funding projects like this,” he says, head tilted back slightly, eyes drifting to the ceiling for a moment as he nods to himself.

Damian squints suspiciously when that is where Father falls silent. “…That’s it?”

Father looks back at Damian, and he seems amused now. “Yes? It’s a good idea, Damian.”

Damian smiles carefully. This feels like a victory, and she can’t help but feel a need to gloat. Only a tiny bit. “See? I’m capable of dealing with my issues just fine. I’m not – you all don’t need to be worried all the time. I am not intrinsically an issue.”

At this, Father frowns. Damian senses her victory slipping away from her and isn’t sure how to backpedal – because she isn’t sure where this has suddenly gone wrong.

“Damian, we don’t see your being transgender as ‘intrinsically an issue’.” Father says carefully – and see –

“Like that!” Damian says, and she doesn’t mean to shout it, or to point accusingly at Father, but there she goes. “You’re – you’re acting like you’re _handling_ me right now!”

Father is not deterred. “Damian, the increased amount of issues and problems and outright violence you face now is something we’re going to worry about and try to help you with, no matter if you think you can deal with it fine by yourself or not. And we already know you are plenty self-reliant.”

Damian feels so small and childish but she – just – this is _important_. “I want to be _happy_ ,” she whispers angrily. “And you all act like you expect me to be feeling fragile and – and _shitty_ all the time. I hate it. It _makes_ me feel those ways, and I don’t want to.” _So stop projecting on me_ , she thinks fiercely, but doesn’t have the confidence to say. Not to Father. 

Father and looks… surprised. It settles into thoughtful. “…I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘shitty’ before.” He eventually says, because they all deflect more than openly discussing _anything_. “Jason? Or school?”

Damian - _tt_ -s snippily (because as far as deflection goes, not only is it obvious but also weak and meaningless and overall it’s condescending that Father thinks she will let this go), but taking anger out on Father is not something she does often enough to have readily thought up methods. She bides her time on that front, bites back the angry correction of _*life* taught me how to say shitty by being exactly that_ , and instead says plaintively, “Father.”

He sighs and ducks his head slightly, in some kind of acquiescence. “Okay, I will… talk to the others,” Father says, but his pause tells Damian that he is reluctant. She doesn’t know what _that_ means. “I… You’ve given me something very interesting to think about, Damian.”

Is that supposed to be a compliment? Damian stays silent because once again, Father has confused her with where he is trying to take the conversation.

“In the meantime,” Father says. “Submit all your Coalition materials to me when you can. We can start looking through them and see what you have going thus far.”

Damian nods numbly, no longer sure if this was a victory or a loss after all. “I will.”

+++

Nothing much changes. Damian doesn’t know if that is because Father hasn’t talked to the others yet, or has and has worded it… oddly. Damian is under no impressions that their family unit functions normally, that Father has the iron clad grip on his clan that he once pretended he wanted. Father does things and sometimes about half the family will follow his lead.

So, maybe Father has voiced what Damian was trying to tell him and the others don’t agree. Don’t agree that Damian should be left alone to be carefree and self-sufficient. Don’t agree that Damian can afford to go on existing without everyone else hovering and worrying and _oh, you’re trans now and everything’s different_. And it _is_ , but it isn’t and just –

Damian doesn’t know what to do. She’s tired and she’s sad and what happened to the her that knows at all times exactly what she wants and how to get it? What happened to the her that didn’t care what others think about her? Except this is her family, and this is different.

This is complicated when it shouldn’t be, and Damian doesn’t know what to do. So she finds herself, after days of no change and no word from Father or _anyone_ on the issue, spilling over at Grayson. It’s not wholly intentional. It’s Grayson picking her up from school to walk to his favorite old burgers and pancakes diner, to bond (and because school’s awful and Damian’s mad about it and ever since the paparazzo stint she’s been on in-school suspense and has to eat lunch in the headmistress’s office). 

“Lighten up, Little D,” Grayson tells her cheerfully as their food comes, all Grayson-picked and ordered. The waiter places a stack of pancakes in front of Damian that smells like macadamia nuts and bananas. Damian casually leans forward and takes a whiff, because it is quite heavenly. She can already feel a little bit of the tension in her stomach that she associates with the annoyances of school dissipating.

“I don’t need you telling me to ‘lighten up’,” Damian points out casually, picking up a fork to poke at her food. She looks over at Grayson’s side of the table, and sees his plate of blueberry pancakes and waffles with a side of scrambled eggs. “That. Is a lot of food.”

Grayson grins. “Oh-hoh, was that a joke? Don’t worry, I’ll eat it all.” He picks up the syrup bottle and begins to pour it liberally over his pancakes and waffles. “Anyway, I just meant, don’t let school get you down. You’ll be in college in practically no time and…” Grayson caps the syrup easily, and sucks a wayward drop of syrup off his thumb. His eyebrows are creased down a little, like he’s worried. Damian sees that. She knows what every micro-tic in his expression means.

“And,” he says, looking up and beaming at her like nothing’s wrong, like a liar – which is so unlike him that it makes Damian’s stomach clench back up. Her heart hurts. “Trust me, college is way better. You’re gonna love it.”

Damian quietly places her fork down, no longer hungry even for what looks like the softest pancakes Damian’s seen in Gotham yet, sans Alfred’s. “I’m not – school is annoying, but I’m not.” Miserable. Is she supposed to be? Things are harder than they should be, which means for other people like her but not like her (not Robin and not a Wayne and not rich and so self-assured and impossible to intimidate and – ) it’s even harder. And why is this just the way things are? “It’s not so bad that I’m just. Biding my time until I get out. I’m not miserable.”

Grayson’s eyebrows lower a fraction of a centimeter more. “Well. I hope you’re not. But I know it’s kind of awful right now.”

She can’t take this. Did Father talk to them at _all_? Damian glares at a spot on the far wall, no longer meeting Grayson’s gaze, mouth a tight closed line. “Awful,” she echoes with a scoff. “Of course, it has to be awful, right? My life, it has to be awful right now.”

“Hey…” Grayson is frowning, is getting up and scooting into the booth on Damian’s side looking concerned. Damian doesn’t particularly want to be touched right now, and she scoots further into the booth until she’s leaning against the window. She glares outside now, at the people walking past this little diner with the warm low lights and cozy smells of grease and spices. Damian’s heart pangs and she wants to go home.

“Damian,” Grayson says softly, respecting Damian’s space and not trying to touch her or move closer. “Are you okay? Did something happen today?”

Ugh, always with the careful _questions_. They’re driving Damian insane. “You know, Grayson, there are days – ” Her voice catches in her throat because the next words pop unbidden in her mind, and the second they do, they echo and her own mortality laughs back at her. Right in the face. And maybe they’re right, if they all think it, if the statistics say that the likelihoods are –

“What?” Grayson sounds bewildered, like he’s desperately trying to understand but is missing the vital piece. His hands are clasped tightly together atop the table, Damian sees out of the corner of her eye, probably in an attempt to keep his tactile impulses in check and not instinctually reach out to touch Damian. “There are days _what_?”

There is no easy way to say this. Maybe Father misunderstood and conveyed the wrong message. Maybe Damian should be more frightened of the world and maybe they’re right and she’s wrong and that’s perhaps the only thing that scares her.

“There are days that you all walk around me like I’m already dead,” Damian says quietly against the window, her breath leaving foggy condensation. Through the mist, she can still see the people passing her by. “Like you’re all ready for me to get killed any moment and everywhere I go is a morgue and – and it’s horrible.”

Because they all might get killed any night in their line of work, but you don’t _focus_ on that. You make the arrangements so if it happens your affairs are already in order, and you take the safety precautions and then you _live_. So why is her trans-ness different? Well, not _why_ – but – but –

“It’s not fair,” Damian says, voice still caught in a weird place in her throat. She clears it and her next words are stronger. “Like I told Father – and he was supposed to talk to you all about this but whatever – but. But I just want to happy. And I will be.” She will. She refuses not to be.

Grayson is quiet for a very, very long moment, staring at her. Damian isn’t looking, but she can feel his eyes boring into her. Eventually, he unclasps his hands and slides one over, palm up, across the tabletop. He stops it close enough that she can spot it out of the corner of her eye without moving her head. Close enough that she could place her hand in his. And after another very, very long moment, she does.

“To be fair,” Grayson tells her, voice kind and soft and sweet like it so often is. “Bruce _did_ talk to us. Just, about how you were feeling bad lately. Said we should try and get you feeling better. I can see where the misunderstanding happened there.”

Damian partway groans, partway laughs. “Oh great.” She is feeling a little more courageous, so she turns her head to peek at Grayson. He doesn’t look upset or terrified or pitying or anything like that. Just a little grimace, a little head shaking and a sigh.

“Nah, we’ll set that part straight. You _are_ right, though,” Grayson admits, more quietly than before, fingers clasping tightly around Damian’s. “You are so right, Damian, and I’m sorry about that. We’re the adults here, and we should be the ones making these observations and making sure you’re happy and just enjoying being a teenager, even with our weird crime fighting lifestyle, and – I am so sorry, okay?”

Damian crinkles her nose, because Grayson is dramatic, per usual. She’s mostly fine. She would be fine even if they didn’t stop this overly-cautious thing. She just would much more prefer that they cut it out. “Well,” she says slowly, turning to face him more. “Don’t start treating me like child or anything.”

This has Grayson laughing and sweeping Damian into a tight, tight hug. It’s a little cramped, the two of them squished together and hugging in this booth seat, but Damian doesn’t really mind. She even hugs him back.

“You _are_ still a kid, but we’ll keep that in mind. Anyway, we’re all adjusting.” Grayson’s hands are warm as he rubs comforting circles on her back, as he murmurs, “And that’s not an excuse. It’s just. It is what it is. I’ll talk to Bruce and the others, and we’ll actually, really, seriously, work this out, okay?”

Damian nods against Grayson’s broad shoulder. She isn’t sure why she’s tolerating such a long hug, but a few more seconds can’t hurt.

“And Damian?” Grayson’s voice drops to a low, low whisper. How he manages to cram so much warmth and affection in such a quiet tone, Damian doesn’t know. “Damian, you are going to live a long, happy life. And because you’re an amazing person, you’re going to make sure a whole lot of other trans kids – and kids who are nonbinary and genderqueer and – and any and every other gender and sexuality identity out there – live long and happy lives, too.”

And Damian rolls her eyes and scoffs into Grayson shoulder, presses her face into the soft crook of his neck and scoffs again, but. But maybe she lets Grayson hold her for a few more minutes because he deserves it. Deserves it for at least trying to meet her more than halfway. Or maybe his words make her insides feel quivery and compressed with so much relief and happiness that she can’t pull away.

The smell of macadamia nuts and syrup permeates the air, and Damian thinks that will stick out in the memory of this afternoon forever.

+++

Grayson of course makes good on his words – she never expected less of him for it. For all Damian perhaps whined about it (“It’s not whining,” Brown insists when she accidentally lets this particular thought slip out. “It’s a valid concern, Damian!”) not much really changes. They leave her alone, at her request, to deal with all the school things in her power to handle and don’t coddle her any more than they used to back before all this self-discovery. Now it is all, once again, based on her age and residence as the youngest among them.

In fact, Drake goes back to incredulity whispered under his breath and half amused glances when Damian picks fights nowadays, which is admittedly less often. He’s earned her respect in a lot of ways, and she partly keeps up the barbs because it’s how they interact… And also because she thinks someone ought to keep Drake on his toes; Grayson babies him, Brown and Cain play best with him, Todd jokes with him in an oddly vicious yet affectionate way, and Father tiptoes around him and says nothing about the more questionable things Drake does in an indulgence by omission sort of way. And Damian? Well, she knows he doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone, but she just doesn’t believe he should forget not everyone in the world will handle him with such softness.

But yes, Damian thinks as she runs a circuit through Red Robin’s territory just to piss him off later when he finds out, Drake’s backed off from gently handling her, and Grayson’s getting there, and she doesn’t see Todd often enough to know the difference yet. Brown gets it, told Damian as much, but has to figure out which parts of their interaction are her overstepping and which parts are their admittedly shifting dynamics. Damian’s found that with age, and with trust, and with admittedly a growing list of indebtedness she owes to each and every one of them, her relationships are changing. Growing deeper.

She _has_ relationships. Ten year old her would scoff in disgust at such prospects. But ten year old her was also a vastly different person.

“Coming up on your right,” A voice says to Damian, literally from her right and not over the comm. Cain has apparently decided to join her in tromping through Drake’s neck of the woods. Or maybe she does this through all their territories; it’s not as if she leaves enough trace for them to really be able to catch her at it.

“Oops,” she says in the monotone way of hers, once they come upon a drug deal and she purposely embeds a throwing knife in a brick wall while intentionally missing the ring leader’s head. A scare tactic, but more importantly a memento for Drake. She’s playing along with Damian, this says, and maybe Drake’s done something to annoy Cain or maybe she’s just bored. Damian doesn’t know, but it makes her smile as they clear jumps together.

The thing about Cain is this: she never truly changed much about how she acted around her. Cain, in many ways, is one of Damian’s favorite people.

+++

Naturally, things culminate with Father. First and foremost, because of Alfred. Alfred, the one who was never included in Damian’s grievances against the family, because he was never… he just…

Alfred, Damian thinks, is the one she is most grateful to, some days.

“Sir, I do believe that is quite _enough_ of the run around, if you please?” Alfred says lightly enough during their most recent ‘vacation’. They are in Italy staying at a coastal hotel as the Wayne family getting away from it all, when really Father is helping Superman track _something_ that Father won’t divulge. He just wants them on standby – which means Drake has been working with Todd back in Gotham since their plane touched down to try and pry into Father’s cases and files to find out what it is he’s keeping from them this time. Even now, as they lounge on the beach, Drake types away on his computer, working on it.

Grayson looks up from his sandcastle building with Cain, because they have all been trained to pick up whispers on the wind and Alfred is not trying to lower his voice.

Damian, looks up from her book, the second time in the past ten minutes – the first had been when a paparazzo had taken the first solo picture of Damian, in her age-appropriate skirted black one piece. Damian had waved cheekily and gone back to her book before Father had chased off the bold man with a look and an eyebrow arch that promised legal repercussions. And then, for the next few minutes, Father had silently and subtly begun rearranging their things and himself so Damian was as blocked from view along the far-side of the beach as possible.

Damian, used to such actions by now, had silently let it transpired, already at terms with how Father would apparently, forever, just handle her carefully. Grayson had twisted his mouth in sympathy and looked back down, when Damian shot him a meaningful look to convey all this, shaking his head like _I know, I know D; I’m sorry_. Cain, not having stopped with their sandcastle, had merely quirked an eyebrow at the whole ordeal. Damian is still trying to learn what all her little nonverbal things meant, what she is saying without saying it. But the way Grayson had bit down on what looked like a tiny smile probably meant something.

Fast forward to now, and Alfred’s confronting him. Interesting. “She’s a child,” Father retorts calmly, evenly to Alfred. Brown, or Drake’s current girlfriend as the media knows her in her disguise as a quiet black-haired girl, looks up carefully, slowly as to not attract attention, from her Vogue magazine. “What, Damian wanting to be self-reliant doesn’t mean I let magazines run articles about her summer bathing suit collection with pictures to accompany it.”

More accurate would be to say something about the close-up shots said articles would run, the more distasteful and crude things they would likely say. It’s absurd and grossly inappropriate, Damian thinks in annoyance, but other than that she thinks no more of it. Because she can’t control _them_ , the rude people in this world, the rude things they will do and say and ask. Father worries and it means he cares and Damian has already done what she can about the rest of the family. So she stays silent.

Alfred does not. “I’m not saying to not perform your fatherly duties. But that includes _discussion_ , sir, and you know it.”

This family is good at one thing especially: simultaneously getting to the point and leaving it to hang. To say what you mean and yet leaving enough fluttering in the wind, unsaid and unaccused, for others to think about and then draw their own answers to fill in the blanks. Maybe that had always started first and foremost with Alfred. 

At any rate, Father only looks long and hard, first at Alfred, and then at Damian. Damian, not at all on the level of intimacy Alfred is with internal driving forces of her Father (and irrationally afraid she will somehow ruin whatever game it is Alfred is playing at), looks back down at her book and stares at the pages with a stoic face set in place.

For a while after, after Alfred has gone back to filling in his crossword puzzles, and Father back to going through Wayne stock options on his tablet, Damian stares unblinking at those same pages, unable to read or get her mind off what maybe has just happened.

(Gordon hoots over the line, when Damian calls her. She is the only one Damian can trust to not get overly emotional and overall useless when it comes to things like this, at least lately. “Oh _man_. And now you see why I don’t take ‘vacations’ with Bruce, real or covers for missions. That man…” There is affection tucked in her voice, along with exasperation. “Alfred will always set him straight, don’t worry. And when he gets back I’ll do something about it too, alright? Now, about your Coalition…” And Damian does appreciate Gordon’s belief that busyness helps when one is distraught or conflicted over something.)

+++

It is not this day on a beach in Italy that makes all the difference, though. It is a night of patrol, with Damian in her element, boots slapping hard against the pavement and breath tiny clouds of condensation with each exhale. Right now, it’s after said patrol, and Damian is still out in the city, trying to clear her head.

 _D… come back to the cave_ , Grayson says over the line, sounding tired, like tonight is like every other night and Damian is just being difficult for no reason. While Damian believes Father will be okay after this, believes that everything is fine, she wants a moment to level herself.

_You’ll rip your stitches_ , Drake says calmly… uselessly. Like Damian doesn’t know how to maneuver and avoid pulling her stitched up side.

“I’ll be fine,” she says curtly over the line, then goes on radio silence so she doesn’t have to keep ignoring them. She won’t hear the last of this once she goes back, but the momentary quiet is almost worth it. She probably has ten minutes at the most before Grayson panics and gets Todd to track her down, and she intends to savor every moment alone that she has.

Usually punching baddies in the face and hauling them to jail would be a good stress reliever, but again Damian’s just gotten off of patrol. She’d spend more time looking for someone to take down that she has before Todd predictably shows up. So she just runs along rooftops and scales buildings, mind empty and the sound of wind in her ears.

When Todd finally gets to her (eight minutes and thirty-two seconds later) she’s on some old bank’s roof, tucked in a stone gargoyle’s shadow and watching the city below her.

“Tough night, huh?” Todd says, casually sitting next to her like he’s not on some errand for Grayson.

“Not really,” Damian grumbles. “It was all superficial wounds. Father was preoccupied with me when I went down first, otherwise he would have walked away with even less. He’ll be off bed rest by the end of the week, latest.”

Todd sits there in silence for a while longer, contemplating something, and Damian is grateful for it.

Todd taps against the gargoyle closest to him thoughtfully for a few seconds more before finally saying, “If I were Dick or Tim, I’d probably ask you if you were feeling guilty or responsible for Bruce taking a hit for you.”

Damian scratches at her stitches, fresh and dry though a little itchy, and hopes Todd doesn’t ask. Because she doesn’t feel guilty but she does feel annoyed, and she’s not sure why of all the emotions she could be feeling that’s the one building up, simmering just below her skin.

Todd shrugs. “But hey, that’s just what the big man does. Worries in weird fucking ways and does things that are really inconvenient and burdensome for the rest of us in attempts to take care of everybody.”

And Damian gets that. Like when Alfred took her aside that day on the beach and told her in that eternally calm voice of his: “Protectiveness is not always pessimism. He’s trying, in little ways.”

Still. “I don’t appreciate condescension.” Damian says lowly.

Todd pauses for a beat and then bursts out laughing. “What? From me? From Bruce?”

Damian rolls her eyes. “Father can get – ”

Todd rolls his eyes right back. “I know how he can get. You think I don’t know that? All of us don’t know that? We all met Bruce when we were kids too, we _know_.” Todd leans more heavily against his gargoyle, arms crossed. “But hey, there’s a fine line between overprotectiveness ‘cause we think you’re a bother, and overprotectiveness ‘cause we think you’re worth looking out for.”

Damian knows that. Really, she does, she just – “I don’t need to be babied, though. You all never did before, when you thought I was a boy.” 

Jason huffs, long and loud, shoulders tensing up to his ears like whatever he’s about say is thoroughly uncomfortable for him. “Kid, I don’t know how many ways I can say it. We’ll work on the methods, but Bats look out for their own. We’re always gonna have your back. Also, I’m pretty sure there was always plenty of overprotectiveness over you, since you’re a _kid_ vigilante – god, we’ve gotta stop recruiting young, I swear to god.”

Damian shifts in her crouch until she’s leaning against the stone statute closest to her, too. She can’t help but ask, “You consider yourself a Bat?” He is one, but usually he’s more tight-lipped on the matter. It’s interesting that he’s willing to say it for Damian’s sake.

Todd groans and runs a hand through his hair, rapping a frustrated knuckle against the gargoyle behind him. “Yeah, yeah. Who else watches out for Gotham like Bats, huh?”

Damian lets out a small laugh, because how can she not? Then she sighs and stands, skirt fluttering gently with the movement. “Alright. I’m not turning my comm back on, but tell Grayson to calm down already.” And she throws herself over the edge of the roof, into the wind, to head back home.

(Later, when she’s sneaking into the infirmary, she comes upon Brown sitting by Father’s bedside. They are having a quiet conversation, one that is mostly Brown talking. Damian catches, “ – not Jason _or_ me, we won’t let that – ” before ducking back out fast enough to not alert either of them to her presence.

Or maybe they notice her anyway, because just as Damian is considering merits of sneaking into the vents to eavesdrop, and how to pull that off, Brown walks out. “He’s all yours,” she says lightly, and her poker face is getting better.

Damian waits outside the infirmary long enough for Father to get the hint and pretend to be sleeping when she comes in, so she can pull up a chair to his bedside to curl up and doze off herself.)

+++

“Bruce,” Brown says to Damian a few days later. “ _Cares_. Too much, and he sucks at showing it.”

Damian rolls her eyes and keeps scribbling out formulas on her chemistry homework. Brown has of course chosen Alfred’s silly but enforced ‘homework hour’ to come accost her, meaning slipping off to avoid whatever ridiculous conversation Brown is gearing up to have will inevitably come and bite her back. Damian’s books are spread all across her desk, and she starts glancing at each one to see if there’s some way she could get away with only needing one or two to finish the problem sets she’s in the middle of. Finding a good spot on the roof to settle down in might give her an additional fifteen minutes of peace and quiet. “I am well aware of Father’s emotional restraints.”

“Yeah,” Brown retorts lightly, exasperatedly. “ ‘Cause you try to _emulate_ them, god.” Brown sighs dramatically and comes up next to Damian, leaning against the edge of Damian’s desk. She’s so far into Damian’s personal space that the denim of her jeans nearly brushes against Damian’s arm. She nudges her in the arm with that leg. “Hey. Stop trying to think up ways to escape and listen up, pipsqueak.”

Damian bristles. “I’m not that little.” _Anymore_ , she neglects to say. She’s grown a lot in the past few years, really.

Brown snorts and crosses her legs at the ankles before looking over at Damian. Damian glances at her out of the side of her eye and notices Brown’s expression is somewhat wry. “I promise you, nothing good comes from trying to be as emotionally distant as Bruce _pretends_ to be. Especially as an overemotional kid.”

Damian turns to her in order to full out glare. “I am neither overemotional nor a child!”

Brown looks at Damian, and there’s a softness in her eyes. Damian doesn’t like it. “Fine. An overemotional _teenager_.”

Damian leaves the ‘overemotional’ snipe alone. “Young adult.”

Brown barks out a laugh, very amused. “Look. Robins have a really… rich history of attempting to act like Bruce emotional-wise at one point or another. We all hit that rough stretch at some point, where you think being… detached from everyone and everything would be easier than all the worrying and hurt when things go wrong. Than others worrying about us, too.”

Brown pauses for a long moment, and though she’s looking at Damian, her gaze is somewhere else, much farther away. “But trust me – it’s not worth it. And it never works.”

Damian shoots Brown a warily confused look. She presses her thumb against the eraser of her pencil and tries to understand what Brown is aiming for, here. “I’m not trying to be like Father. I simply – I understand how he is. And I deal with it.”

Brown shakes her head, and nudges her leg to Damian’s arm again. “Okay, that’s the thing – and you’re maybe a little too young to see it, but… We’ve all had the pleasure of growing up with Bruce. And the funny thing, Damian, is once you get to this side of puberty, you start realizing that Bruce isn’t even _like_ that.”

Damian’s wary expression has cemented into skepticism. “Are you trying to tell me that hormones and lesser impulse control prevent me from noticing that Father chooses when and where he emotes? Because believe me – ”

“No,” Brown says quietly, and she’s twirling a strand of hair around her finger, clearly deliberating carefully over what she wants to say. “No, I’m saying there’s crap Bruce does that you won’t understand is ridiculous but ultimately from a good place in his heart. Not until you’re older and Bruce isn’t so much _the Batman_ and this unquestionable authority figure as he is an aging man with a too soft heart, lots of trauma, and a weird as hell legacy.”

Damian has no clue what she’s saying. She stares up at her, confused.

It must show on her face, because Brown sighs again, loud and long this time. “God, okay. So! Your dad is _absolutely_ ridiculous and it’s _tiring_. How he projects onto all of us, _about_ us, all the time.” She runs a hand through her blonde hair, and stops to toy with another single strand. “It really started with Jason, honestly. And then I – ” Brown cuts off and goes very still, and stares blankly down at that strand of hair she’s playing with.

Brown shivers and finally continues. “Just, you’re the youngest and you’re coming with a brand-new set of issues when it comes to threats and danger in the lives we lead, so he’s maybe a little out of control right now. With the weirdness and the projecting.”

And Damian sullenly looks back down at her homework, because everyone keeps saying the same things: this is just Father, just the family. This is just their type of caring. That it’s all understandable. That Damian is an ‘at risk existence’ or something. Can’t they understand that _she’s_ tired, too?

Brown is silent for another long moment. Then, she nudges her leg against Damian again (and Damian bats it away this time) and says, “But you know, Damian, sometimes it’s not so bad, is it? Being worried and fussed over? Being cared about?”

But that’s not how it feels, Damian wants to say. “I don’t _need_ special treatment, Brown.”

Brown reaches over and ruffles her hair, which has Damian spluttering and leaning out of her reach before glaring at her. Brown’s smiling now, a tiny and somber thing in comparison to her usual beaming. “Yeah, you don’t. But it’s not like it bothers us to care about you. Even Bruce lets us take care of him every now and then, now that he’s getting old.” Brown’s smile stretches a fraction wider. “We’re wearing the old man down.”

Damian sighs herself and sets her pencil down, giving up on completing her homework for now. “I don’t want to be ‘worn down’ about this.”

Brown leans in and extends herself to get one last hair ruffle in, before she twists away and dodges Damian attempting to grab her arm to force her to stop, laughing the whole time. “Well, tough. How else is anyone in this family supposed to get and give affirmation and validation, if not through overprotectiveness?”

With that she shrugs casually, like none of what she’s said has any weight to it, and leaves quietly. Damian’s left staring at the door, and thinking about that – about how many times she’ll end up needing her family rehashing the same thing until she apparently gets it; about the words _affirmation_ and _validation_. Like that time in the limo after Damian’s big fight, when she was left waiting and wanting for Father to tell her she did well. Like that time she came out to Grayson for the first time.

_Acknowledge who I am and accept it_ , is what she’s wanted all along. And they have. It’s just the world, she’s realizing, that they’re trying to get to do the same.

+++

The funny thing about life is that it goes on. Things get back to normal and routines are fallen back into. Father heals just fine and the patrol schedule reverts back into its usual shifts. Damian goes to school during most weekdays and ignores the more hostile of her classmates and gets on just fine. There are occasions of larger missions amidst it all, and Damian wouldn’t say she’s _bored_ or that anything ever becomes truly monotonous but…

But there are constants. Constants of how Cain trains her better than, really, anyone else when they spar. That Gordon helps her set up a helpline first and foremost, while they wait for the rest of the organization funding and paperwork to be processed. How Father keeps up his silent but persistent way of flexing Wayne influence in media monopolies to pull the ruder tabloids. 

Grayson is still Damian’s favorite to get paired up with for missions because they work well together, Grayson reining her in only when he feels he absolutely needs to, offering suggestions for how to better hold investigations instead of ordering her to change her methods. Todd still pops in every now and then like the wayward addition to the family that he is, adding his vast inside knowledge of the underworld to their intel and occasionally pulling for favors of his own in the trade-off. Brown still picks and teases at Damian’s severity, about how it’s ‘unusual’ for her age, but lately Damian’s seeing the affection in it and finds it less annoying (though she doesn’t think she’ll ever stop turning her nose up at the jabs, and sniping right back at Brown in retaliation). And Drake…

Damian looks up from her files, some old case Grayson and Father want her to mock-solve to see how well she can run investigations solo and where in her technique she needs work (Damian is confident that working in this field since she was ten while watching the best has left her with little room to grow, but she humors them). Across the cave, Drake is running some simulation on the main computer, concentrating hard on whatever it is he’s typing up.

Maybe a few months ago Damian would have disrupted the gentle peace that lays between them, unsure how else to proceed at their slowly-changing interactions when precedence has always spelled out insults and incessant fighting. Comfortable quiet has rarely been a fixture of their relationship.

Drake feels Damian staring, and without even stopping or turning around, he says lightly, “Yes, Damian?”

Damian doesn’t say anything, long enough so Drake will pause and turn to look at her. When he does, Damian makes sure to roll her eyes so exaggeratedly that he can see it from his place at the computer, even when she’s across the Cave at a work table.

“ _Nothing_ , Drake,” she says, with a hint of a smirk and absolutely no venom. Drake snorts and turns back to his work.

“Okay, Damian,” he says, amused. And it’s nice. Surprisingly, this is nice.

Damian curls up in her chair and goes back to her case files. Her uniform skirt flutters with the movement, and it makes Damian smile a little to herself. There’s been plenty of change, but among it there are still constants.


End file.
